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The Nikon 1 J1 is often a stylish compact system camera having a 10-megapixel “CX” format sensor and also the all-new Nikon 1 lens mount. Boasting continuous shooting speeds as much as 60 frames per second at full resolution, Full HD video capture, an ultra-fast hybrid auto-focus system, Smart Photo Selector along with a unique Motion Snapshot Mode, the portable Nikon J1 also provides more conventional shooting modes like Programmed Auto, Aperture and Shutter Priority, and also Metered Manual. Also agreeable is really a built-in pop-up flash which has a guide volume of 5, a 3 inch rear display as well as an electronic shutter. Priced at $649.95 / 549.99 using a 10-30mm contact, $699.95 / 599.99 with a 10mm pancake lens, or $799.95 / 699.99 in a very double-lens kit with all the 10-30mm and 30-110mm zoom lenses, the Nikon 1 J1 is scheduled to go on sale later this month.

The Nikon 1 J1 is generally crafted from aluminium with magnesium alloy reinforced parts and is therefore heavier than you would think according to its size alone, weighing in at 234g with the body only. Furthermore, it feels better made than the official product shots would have you believe. Having an essentially grip-less design, the Nikon J1 is extremely much a two-handed affair that really needs you to definitely hold the camera’s weight within the left-hand, clutching the lens, and rehearse your right hand for balance and operating the controls. This is an excellent the way it makes you take note of holding you properly, which goes further towards avoiding shake-induced blur as part of your photos.

The camera’s clean, minimalist front plate is covered with the all-new Nikon 1 lens mount. As opposed to like a scaled-down version in the classic F mount, it’s actually a brand spanking new design that delivers 100% electronic communication relating to the attached lens and also the camera body, courtesy of twelve contacts. Just like within the manufacturer’s F-mount SLR cameras, you will find there’s white dot for simple lens alignment, eventhough it has moved from the 2 o’clock position (when viewed front on) up with the mount. The lenses themselves feature a short silver ridge about the lens barrel, which should be in alignment with said dot to ensure that you to have the ability to attach the lens to your camera. Of course this might need a bit of adjusting to, this task makes changing lenses quicker and simpler.

Without lens attached, you will notice the sensor sitting right behind the plane with the bayonet mount. Like the mount itself, the sensor is completely new. Measuring 13.2×8.8mm this “CX” format imaging chip has quantity area of the most popular imagers utilized in compact and bridge cameras much like the Fujifilm X10 and S100FS, but only most of the location of the standard Four Thirds sensor. In linear terms, a Four Thirds chip has a 1.36x longer diagonal versus the Nikon CX imager. Considering the fact that Four Thirds features a 2x focal length multiplier, the CX “crop factor” works out to about 2.72, and therefore a 10mm lens has approximately precisely the same angle of view as being a 27.2mm lens on an FX or 35mm film camera. The Nikon 1 Nikkor 10-30mm standard zoom is thus equal to a 27.2-81.6mm (or, practically speaking, 28-80mm) FX lens when it comes to its angle-of-view range.

Other Nikon J1’s faceplate is nearly empty, featuring exactly the lens release, a receiver for the optional ML-L3 infrared handheld control, two narrow slits for that microphone either side in the lens, along with an AF assist/self-timer lamp. There’s no grip in any respect about the front of the Nikon 1 J1.

There are 2 options for powering about the Nikon 1 J1 and Nikon 1 V1. You may either utilize the on/off button sitting near the shutter release or, for those who have a collapsible-barrel standard zoom lens attached, just press the unlocking button within the lens barrel and turn the zoom ring to unlock the lens, an act that creates the camera to change on automatically. It becomes an ingenious solution because you require to unlock the lens for shooting anyway. Start-up takes about another - nothing to write home about but nonetheless decent and entirely adequate.

You can frame your shots using the rear screen - there is absolutely no electronic viewfinder as within the V1 model, an important distinction between both the. The LCD screen is a three-inch, 460,000-dot display that boasts wide viewing angles, great definition and accurate colours only so-so visibility in strong daylight. We missed the EVF aided by the J1 alongside the V1, in bright sunlit conditions or with all the 30-110mm telezoom lens as holding the camera around eye-level helped to stabilise the lens avoiding camera shake.

The control layout is rather peculiar. The Nikon 1 J1 has a small, rear-mounted mode dial that lacks most of the shooting modes that happen to be usually seen on similar dials - such as P, A, S and M - eventhough it has enough room to accommodate them. These modes can be purchased on the J1 however you should dive in to the rather long-winded and not entirely logical menu to find them. The J1’s mode dial merely has four settings, Photo, Video, Motion Snapshot and Smart Photo Selector. The four-way controller has four functions mapped onto its Up, Right, Down and Left buttons; including AE/AF-Lock, exposure compensation, flash mode and self-timer, respectively. Even though this is not a bad range of functions, the fact that there is no ISO button will doubtlessly produce a great deal of photographers interested in purchasing the Nikon J1 to become unhappy.

There’s a button within the rear labelled “F” but alas, it’s not a programmable function button. In Photo mode, it allows you to quickly pick from the continuous shooting modes, during Video mode it enables you to toggle between regular and slow-motion recording. There are two more vital controls on the back from the camera, together with a scroll wheel around the four-way pad as well as a rocker switch marked which has a loupe icon. The scroll wheel is used to create the shutter speed in Manual and Shutter Priority modes (when you’ve found them inside menu, which is), even though the rocker switch controls the aperture. Precisely why it provides a loupe icon beside it can be this control is utilized to focus upon an image to check on for critical focus in Playback mode. Last of all, you can find four small buttons across the navigation pad, flush from the rear panel in the camera, including Display Mode, Playback, Menu and Delete.

So what are the type shooting modes within the mode dial information on? The Photo or Still Image mode, marked using a green camera icon, is to try and will need to be usually. With the mode dial set to the present position, you may pick your desired exposure mode in the menu. The Nikon J1’s Scene Auto Selector is a smart auto mode the location where the camera analyses the scene before its lens and picks just what it thinks could be the right way of that particular scene. You may also make a choice in the conventional PASM modes, which supply you with full menu access and the ability to manually set the aperture, shutter speed, or both (Program AE Shift is available in P mode). ISO and white balance can be manually selected, only from your menu, as stated earlier.

Of course there’s AWB and auto ISO as well, together with the latter arriving three flavours (Auto 100-400, 100-800 or 100-3200) helping you to specify how high you want the digital camera to go if your light gets low. It’s also possible to select from three AF Area modes, including Auto Area, where the camera takes management of what it focusses on (this is not a terrific mode to possess since your default because camera obviously can’t read your head and will concentrate on another thing than your actual subject); Single Point, in places you can make certainly one of 135 AF points beginning with hitting OK after which moving the active AF point throughout the frame with all the four-way pad; and Subject Tracking, the place you pick your subject, press OK and permit the digital camera to track that subject because it moves around, providing this doesn’t happen leave the frame needless to say.

The Nikon 1 J1 has a intriguing hybrid auto-focus system that combines contrast- and phase-difference detection likewise because Fujifilm F300EXR did. This gives the Nikon 1 J1 to focus extremely quickly in good light, even using a moving subject. The corporation claims the Nikon 1 system cameras would be the fastest-focusing machines on the planet, which matches our experience - providing there’s enough light. When light levels drop, you switches to contrast-detect AF which, though faster than you are on most cameras, isn’t as quickly as the other method. It is usually the digital camera that decides which AF technique to use - the user has no affect this.

Usually, the J1 in most cases only turn to contrast detection when light levels are low. In good light, we had arrived able to take sharp photos of fast-moving subjects. The Nikon J1 certainly will not disappoint here. Manual focusing is usually possible, however the Nikon 1 lenses do not have focus rings. If you want to focus manually, you first of all have to hit the AF button, choose MF, press OK and after that utilize the scroll wheel to modify focus. To help you with this, the Nikon J1 magnifies the central part of the image and displays a rudimentary focus scale down the right side in the frame - but those are the only focusing helps you get. There is absolutely no peaking function available as on some rival models.

The J1 has an electronic shutter (the V1 even offers a mechanical shutter). Itrrrs very silent (the attention confirmation beep might be disabled in the menu) and allows the application of shutter speeds as quickly as 1/16,000th of any second and, with the Electronic Hi setting selected, enables you to shoot full-resolution stills at 60 frames per second. Note however that although it is a major achievement, it’s restricted by a buffer that will only hold 12 raw files. Additionally, the application of this mode precludes AF tracking - you have to lower the frame rate to 10fps if you wish that -, along with the viewfinder goes blank as you move the pictures will be taken. Single thing that it application you can imagine where shooting full-resolution stills at 60fps could really be useful is AE bracketing for HDR imaging. With this rate, some 5 bracketed shots may be used a lot less than 0.1 second, rendering small movements that may otherwise pose alignment problems - like leaves being blown inside wind - a non-issue. Alas, the Nikon J1 does not offer this sort of feature - actually it does not offer autoexposure bracketing whatsoever.

Getting to the video mode, the Nikon 1 J1 has some pleasant surprises here. To start with, you might be set to shoot Full HD footage, so you even reach select 1080p @ 30fps or 1080i @ 60fps, depending on whether you want to help progressive or interlaced video. Should you not need Full HD, additionally, there is 720p @ 60fps, that is really smooth but still counts as high-definition. Secondly, you get full manual treatments for exposure in video mode. This is an option; you won’t need to shoot in M mode and you can in the event that’s what you require. Thirdly, you obtain fast, continuous AF in video mode, and delay pills work well, particularly good light. Movies are compressed utilizing the H.264 codec and stored as MOV files. There are separate shutter release buttons for stills and video, and thanks to this - along with the massive processing power in the Nikon J1 - you may take multiple full-resolution stills at the same time recording HD video. This works the opposite way round too - you may capture a movie clip regardless of whether the mode dial is within the Still Image position, by simply pressing the red movie shutter release. We’ve discovered that in this instance you will forever record it at 720p/60fps.

As well as being capable of shooting regular movies in HD quality, the Nikon 1 J1 may also shoot video at 400fps for slow-motion playback. The resolution is leaner as well as the aspect ratio can be an ultra-widescreen 2.67:1, but the quality is adequate for YouTube, Vimeo and so forth. These videos are played back at 30fps, and that is more than 13x slower versus the capture speed of 400fps, helping you to get creative and show the world several interesting phenomena which happen too quickly to observe instantly. The Nikon J1 goes a little more forward by a 1200fps video mode, even so the resolution and overall quality is just too poor for the to be genuinely useful.

The next icon about the mode dial stands for Smart Photo Selector. This feature allows your camera to capture no less than 20 photos with a single press of the shutter release, including some that had been taken before fully depressing the button. The camera analyses the average person pictures in the series and discards 15 of those, keeping only the five so it thinks might be best in terms of sharpness and composition. This feature could be genuinely useful when photographing fast action and fleeting moments.

Finally, there exists a so-called Motion Snapshot mode the location where the camera records a quick high-definition movie - whose buffering starts with a half-press from the shutter release, so again includes events which had happened prior to a button was fully depressed - and also needs a still photograph. The film as well as the still image are held in separate files nevertheless the camera can combine them into a single slow-motion clip with vocals. It’s fun but we’re not able to really envision people employing this shooting mode frequently. (When you see the video over a computer, it is going to play back at normal speed, without sound, this mode is very only interesting in case you view the clip in-camera or hook your camera nearly an HDTV by using an HDMI cable.)

The Nikon J1 stores photos and videos on SD/SDHC/SDXC memory cards, and sports ths fastest UHS-I speed class. The digital camera operates on a smaller EN-EL20 battery to the V1 larger, and is consequently capable of producing considerably less shots for a passing fancy charge, managing around 230, eventhough it does help for making your camera body small. The camera’s tripod socket is constructed of metal and is also situated line together with the lens’ optical axis. This shows that changing batteries or cards isn’t likely as you move the J1 is installed on a tripod, because the hinges of the battery/card compartment door are extremely towards the tripod mount.

So, how did we like while using Nikon 1 J1? Similarly, we liked it a great deal. In good light, its auto-focus strategy is indeed faster than basically anything we’ve used to date, the ability to track and lock concentrate on numerous truly fast-moving subjects, and yielding a great deal of sharp images in situations where our keeper rates have not been very high. Additionally, its high-speed continuous shooting modes have allowed us to capture interesting moments that we’d have surely missed if we had used a slower camera. The built-in pop-up flash proved more useful what has modest guide number might suggest, with all the clever design minimising red-eye.

Conversely, the Nikon J1 has its own share of frustrating idiosyncrasies beginning from the person interface that makes you dive to the menu to reach functions as common as exposure mode, ISO speeds and white balance. While Nikon obviously cannot add extra buttons to a finished product, they might a minimum of make the “F” button customisable by using a firmware update. Also, to find out a passionate button for exposure compensation - that is a great thing - I did not are able to activate a live histogram, though it would’ve made exposure compensation much more useful and make use of. Again, this may likely to end up fixed in firmware.

We missed the V1’s smooth, high-resolution electronic viewfinder, especially in bright light or when using the telephoto lens which does not lend itself well to being held out at arms length. The J1 only has a glass dust shield as it is defense against unwanted debris, rather than more proactive sensor cleaning unit that the V1 offers, and the smaller battery implies that you will need to buy another someone to arrive at the day’s heavy shooting. The lack of an accessory port ensures that almost not one of the Nikon 1 accessories are works with the J1, for example the external flash and GPS unit.

One more thing we would not like could be that the camera would always show the picture just taken for a few seconds onscreen, therefore we wouldn’t find a way to turn this instant postview function completely off (even though you can at any rate cancel it via a half-press from the shutter release). Finally, as the camera is usually fast and responsive, the camera takes overly long to wake up from sleep mode gets hotter has been idle for a short time, causing several missed shots.

That being said, the Nikon 1 J1 is a smaller than average compact, high-performance system camera that like its our government are able to use several tweaks to the interface to higher suit the needs of serious amateurs. The intended marketplace of casual users will enjoy it for its sheer speed, built-in flash, lightweight and the fun features it provides. Let’s now see how the Nikon 1 J1 fared inside image quality department.